Saturday, February 21, 2015

Step forward, step back

Step forward:

The Scroll Accordion is well on its way. A file for the lasercutter is pretty much ready to go (thanks Isaac!) and the "backbone" arrived in the mail today. I put some of it together just a moment ago and it's looking pretty good!



The "backbone" is a 1/4" threaded steel rod (super cheap!) that conveniently fits through pre-existing holes in the GameTrak string receptacles. The rod I'm using is 1 foot long and the GameTraks are spaced 2 inches apart (at points 3", 5", 7", and 9") and are held there by 1/4" nuts. This will fit into my lasercut design, which I will update you with next week (I hope!).

Step back:

Flimsy, glued over 15+ year old solder connections are need to be treated with care. I've been carrying them around with me in my backpack without much protection and I'm now paying for that poor decision...




In case it's not clear, all those wires should be connected to those boards. The wires broke from the glue holding the soldered end in.

While this throws a wrench in my production schedule, it provides me an opportunity to strengthen the sensor connections. I will use a test GameTrak to experiment with removing glue and the original solder with hopes to replace them with right angle headers (or something else less prone to breaking in half). Should I be successful this would cut down on unnecessary wire length and also increase the durability of the instrument.

To-do list:
  1. Research a way to salvage the broken connections
  2. Wire up perfboard to accommodate multiplexor and all sensors
  3. Lasercut the enclosure
  4. Assemble the instrument
  5. Figure out how the heck I'm going to use all this data to make an engaging musical performance



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